The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century

NISH COLON

d been called upon to wage a continuous warfare with the Moors, and during this time had not only found little leisure to cultivate the arts of peace, but had acquired a disdain for manual work which helped to mould her colonial administration and influenced all her subsequent history. And when the termination of the last of these wars left her mistress of a united Spain, and the exploitation of her own resources seemed to require all the energies she could muster, an entire new

other islands of the same group, and thence to Hispaniola, Tortuga and Cuba. Returning to Spain in March 1493, he sailed again in September of the same year with seventeen vessels and 1500 persons, and this time keeping farther to the south, sighted Porto Rico and some of the Lesser Antilles, founded a colony on Hispaniola, an

ried the Pacific Ocean from the heights of Darien, revealing for the first time the existence of a new continent. In 1520 Magellan entered the Pacific through the strait which bears his name, and a year later was killed in one of the Philippine Islands. Within the next twenty years Cortez had conquered the realm of Montezuma, and

erde. Later Spanish writers made much of this papal gift; yet, as Georges Scelle points out,2 it is possible that this bull was not so much a deed of conveyance, investing the Spaniards with the proprietorship of America, as it was an act of ecclesiastical jurisdiction according them, on the strength of their acquired right and proven Catholicism, a monopoly as it were in the propagation of the faith. At that time, even Catholic princes were no longer accustomed to seek the Pope's sanction when making a new conquest

If the Spanish kings had not choked their government with procrastination and routine; if they had only taken their task a bit less seriously and had not tried to apply too strictly to an empty continent the paternal administration of an older country; we might have been privileged to witness the development and operation of as complete and benign a system of colonial government as has been devised in modern times. The public initiative of the Spanish government, and the care with which it selected its colonists, compare very favourably with the opportunism of the English and the French, who colonized by chance private activity and sent the worst elements of their population, criminals and vagabonds, to people their new settlements across the sea. However much we may deprecate the treatment

nd filled the new world with thousands of idle, unproductive, and often licentious friars. With an innate distrust and fear of individual initiative, it gave virtual omnipotence to royal officials and excluded all creoles from public employment. In this fashion was transferred to America the crushing political and ecclesiastical absolutism of the mother country. Self-reliance and independence of thought or action on the part of the creoles was discouraged, divisions and factions among them were encouraged and educational opportunities restricted, and the American-born Spaniards gradually sank into idleness and lethargy, indifferent to all but childish hon

by means of a rigid and complicated commercial system. Yet in the end it saw the trade of the New World pass into the hands of its rivals, its own marine r

aterials and articles which did not compete with the home products with which they were to be exchanged. The second principle was the mercantile doctrine which, considering as wealth itself the precious metals which are but its symbol, laid down that money ought, by every means possible, to be imported and hoarded, never exported.4 This latter theory, the fallacy of wh

products of their manufacture to the colonies, when they did not have enough to supply their own needs. To make up for this deficiency their merchants were driven to have recourse to foreigners, to whom they lent their names in order to elude a law which forbade commerce between the colonies and traders of other nations. In return for the manufactured articles of the English, Dutch and French, and of the great commercial cities like Genoa and Hamburg, they were obliged to give their own raw materials and the products of the Indies-wool, sil

time the government itself, as well as the colonist, came to be concerned, not so much with the agricultural products of the Indies, but with the return of the precious metals. Natives were made to work the mines, while many regions adapted to agriculture, Guiana, Caracas and Buenos Ayres, were neglected, and the peopling of the colonies by Europeans was slow. The emperor, Charles V., did little to stem this tendency, but drifted along with the tide. Immigration was restricted to keep the colonies free from the contamination of heresy and of foreigners. The Spanish population was concentrated in cities, and the country divided into great estates granted by the crown to the families of the conquistadores or to favourites at court. The immense areas of Peru, Buenos Ayres and Mexico were submitted to the most unjust and arbitrary regulations, with no object but to stifle growing industry and put them in absolute depende

tile, and of that realm Seville was then the chief mercantile city. It was not a suitable port, however, to be distinguished by so high a privilege. Only ships of less than 200 tons were able to cross the bar of San Lucar, and goods therefore had to be transhipped-a disability which was soon felt when traffic and vessels became heavier.8 The fact, nevertheless, that the official organization called the Casa dé Contratacion was seated in Seville, together with the inf

zation. It received all the revenues accruing from the Indies, not only the imposts on commerce, but also all the taxes remitted by colonial officers. As a consultative body it had the right to propose directly to the King anything which it deemed necessary to the development and organization of American commerce; and as a tribunal it possessed an absolute competence over all crimes under the common law, and over all infractions of the ordinances governing the trade of the Indies, to the exclusion of eve

ad fulfilled the conditions required for engaging in American commerce was allowed to depart alone and at any time of the year. From about 1526, however, merchant vessels were ordered to sail together, and by a cedula of July 1561, the system of fleets was made permanent and obligatory. This decree prohibited any ship from sailing alone to America from Cadiz or San Lucar on pain of forfeiture of ship and cargo.12 Two fleets were organized each year, one for Terra Firma going to Cartagena and Porto Bello, the other designed for the port of San Juan d'Ulloa (Vera Cruz) in N

s was rapidly increasing, American commerce fell off so sadly that eight or ten were sufficient for all the trade of South and Central America. The general of the galleons, on his departure, received from the Council of the Indies three sealed packets. The first, opened at the Canaries, contained the name of the island in the West Indies at which the fleet was first to call. The s

arely changing a sail until Deseada or one of the other West Indian islands was sighted. From Deseada the galleons steered an easy course to Cape de la Vela, and thence to Cartagena. When the galleons sailed from Spain alone, however, they entered the Caribbean Sea by the channel between Tobago and Trinidad, afterwards named the Galleons' Passage. Opposite Margarita a second patache left the fleet to visit the island and collect the royal revenues, although after the exhaustion of the pearl fisheries the island lost most o

of the galleons, meanwhile, was also sending a courier overland to Lima, and another to Santa Fe, the capital of the interior province of New Granada, whence runners carried to Popagan, Antioquia, Mariguita, and adjacent provinces, the news of his arrival.16 The galleons were instructed to remain at Cartagena only a month, but bribes from the merchants generally made it their interest to linger for fifty or sixty days. To Cartag

pment to Panama. Within less than a fortnight all was in readiness. The Armada, carrying a considerable treasure, sailed from Callao and, touching at Payta, was joined by the Navio del Oro (golden ship), which carried the gold from the province

, bad sanitation, and an extremely unhealthy climate, the place became an open grave, ready to swallow all who resorted there. In 1637, during the fifteen days that the galleons remained at Porto Bello, 500 men died of sickness. Meanwhile, day by day, the mule-trains from Panama were winding their way into the town. Gage in one day counted 200 mules laden with wedges of silver, which were unloaded in the market-place and permitted to lie about like heaps of stones in the streets, without causing any fear or suspicion of being lost.20 While the trea

able time of arrival.24 For when the galleons were in the Indies all ports were closed by the Spaniards, for fear that precious information of the whereabouts of the fleet and of the value of its cargo might inconveniently leak out to their rivals. From Cartagena the course was north-west past Jamaica and the Caymans to the Isle of Pines, and thence round Capes Corrientes and San Antonio to Havana. The fleet generally required about eight days for the journey, and arrived at Havana late in the summer. Here the galleons refitted and revictualled, received tobacco, sugar, and other Cuban exports, and if not ordered to return with the Flota, sailed for Spain no later than the middle of September. The course for Spain was from Cuba thro

little isles of Mona and Saona, as far as the Bay of Neyba in Hispaniola, where the ships took on fresh wood and water.26 Putting to sea again, and circling round Beata and Alta Vela, the fleet sighted in turn Cape Tiburon, Cape de Cruz, the Isle of Pines, and Capes Corrientes and San Antonio at the west end of Cuba. Meanwhile merchant ships had dropped away one by one, sailing to San Juan de Porto Rico, San Domingo, St. Jago de Cuba and even to Truxillo and Cavallos in Honduras, to carry orders from Spain to the governors,

ent provinces, the goods from China and the Philippines carried across Mexico from the Pacific port of Acapulco, and the ten or twelve millions of treasure for the king, were at once put on board and the ships departed to join the galleons at Havana. Otherwise the fleet sailed from Vera Cruz in April,

2000 to 2500 quintals28 of silver, and sometimes convoyed six or seven merchant vessels. From time to time an isolated ship was also allowed to sail from Spain to Caracas with licence from the Council of the Indies and the Contratacion, paying the king a duty of five ducats on the ton. It was called the "register of Caracas," took the same route as the galleons, and returned with one of the fleets from Havana. Similar vessels traded at Maracaibo, in Porto Rico and at San Domingo, at Havana and Matanzas in Cuba and at Truxillo and Campeache.29 There was always, moreover, a special

a pack of terriers they hung upon the skirts of the great unwieldy fleets, ready to snap up any unfortunate vessel which a tempest or other accident had separated from its fellows. When Thomas Gage was sailing in the galleons from Porto Bello to Cartagena in 1637, four buccaneers hovering near them carried away two merchant-ships under cover of darkness. As the same fleet was departing from Havana, just outside the harbour two str

it of the captain, the sailors, and even of the general. The men-of-war, indeed, were sometimes so embarrassed with goods and passengers that it was scarcely possible to defend them when attacked. The galleon which bore the general's flag had often as many as 700 souls, crew, marines and passengers, on board, and the same number were crowded upon those carrying the vice-admiral and the pilot. Ship-masters frequently hired guns, anchors, c

on the account of foreigners, and a royal cedula of 1614 decreed the penalty of death and confiscation upon any who connived at the participation of foreigners in Spanish colonial commerce.33 It was impossible, however, to maintain so complete an exclusion when the products of Spain fell far short of supplying the needs of the colonists. Foreign merchants were bound to have a hand in this traffic, and the Spanish government tried to recompense itself by imposing on the out-going car

far as navigation permitted, and then transported the goods overland through Paraguay and Tucuman to Potosi and even to Lima. The Spanish merchants of Peru kept factors in Brazil as well as in Spain, and as Portuguese imposts were not so excessive as those levied at Cadiz and Seville, the Portuguese could undersell their Spanish riva

ncouraged the traffic on the plea that the colonists demanded it.36 The subterfuges adopted by the interlopers were very simple. When a vessel wished to enter a Spanish port to trade, the captain, pretending that provisions had run low, or that the ship suffered from a leak or a broken mast, sent a polite note to the governor accompanied by a considerable gift. He generally obtained permission to enter, unl

e in the neighbourhood by firing a shot from a cannon. Sometimes a large ship filled with merchandise was stationed in a bay close at hand, and by means of these smaller craft made its trade with the colonists. The latter, generally in disguise, came off in canoes by night. T

nder pleas of prior discovery and papal investiture, to reserve half the world to themselves. Without a marine, without maritime traditions, they sought to hold a colonial empire greater than any the world had yet seen, and comparable only with the empire of Great Britain three centuries later. By discouraging industry in Spain, and yet enforcing in the colonies an absolute commercial dependence on the home-country, by combining in their rule of distant A

OTERS OF THE S

y realise. Certainly the inveterate hostility with which the Englishman learned to regard the Spaniard in the latter half of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries found its most remarkable expression in the exploits of the Elizabethan "sea-dogs" and of the buccaneers of a later period. The

g them during these persecutions were found many men belonging to the best families in England, and although with the accession of Elizabeth most of the leaders returned to the service of the State, the pirate crews remained at their old trade. The contagion spread, especially in the western counties, and great numbers of fishermen who found their old employment profitless were recruited into this new calling.37 At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign we find these Anglo-Irish pirates ven

me-honoured proofs of fire and steel. The English nation, however, in the first half of the sixteenth century, had not disputed with Spain her exclusive trade and dominion in those regions. The hardy mariners of the north were still indifferent to the wonders of a new continent awaiting their exploitation, and it was left to the Spaniards to unfold before the eyes of Europe the vast riches of America, and to found empires on the plateaus of Mexico and beyond the Andes. During the reign of Philip II. all this was changed. English privateers began to extend their operations westward, and to sap the very sources of Spanish wealth and power, while the wars which absorbed the attention of the Spaniards in Europe, from the revolt of the Low Countries to the Treaty of Westphalia, left

he Spaniards in America, however, proved to be no match for the bold, intrepid mariners who disputed their supremacy. The descendants of the Conquistadores had deteriorated sadly from the type of their forbears. Softened by tropical heats and a crude, uncultured luxury, they seem to have lost initiative and power of resistance. The disastrous commercial system of monopoly and centralization forced them to vegetate; while the policy of confining political office to native-born Spaniards denied any outlet to creole talent and energy. Moreover, the productive power and administrative ab

ico and Peru, had been subdued by treachery, their kings murdered, and their people made to suffer a living death in the mines of Potosi and New Spain. Such was the Protestant Englishman's conception, in the sixteenth century, of the results of Spanish colonial policy. To avenge the blood of these innocent victims, and teach the true religion to the survivors, was to glorify the Church militant and strike a blow at Antichrist. Spain, moreover, in the eyes of the Puritans, was the lieu

on; except that of being by accident the first discoverer of some parts of it; where the unprecedented cruelties, exorbitances and barbarities, their own histories witness, they practised on a poor, naked and innocent people, which inhabited the islands, as well as upon those truly civilized and mighty empires of Peru and Mexico, called to all mankind for succour and relief against their outrageous avarice and horrid massacres.... (We) slept on until the ambitious Spaniard, by that inexhaustible spring of treasure, had corrupted most of the courts and senates of Europe, and had set on fire, by civil broils and discords, all our neighbour nations, or had

t storm; that this ship afterwards ran into a sea of ice, and unable to get through, turned south, touched at Bacallaos (Newfoundland), where the pilot was killed by Indians, and sailing 400 leagues along the coast of "terra nueva" had found her way to this island of Porto Rico. The Englishmen offered to show their commission written in Latin and Romance, which the Spanish captain could not read; and after sojourning at the island for two days, they inquired for the route to Hispaniola and sailed away. On the evening of 25th November this same vessel appeared before the port of San Domingo, the capital of Hispaniola, where the master with ten or twelve sailors went ashore in a boat to ask leave to enter and trade. This they o

arrying negroes from the African coast to the Spanish colonies to be sold as slaves. The rapid depopulation of the Indies, and the really serious concern of the Spanish crown for the preservation of the indigenes, had compelled the Spanish government to permit the introduction of negro slaves from an early period. At first restricted to Christian slaves carried from Spain, after 1510 licences to take over a certain number, subject of course to governmental imposts, were given to private individuals; and in August 1518, owing to the incessant clamour of the colonists for more negroes, Laurent de Gouvenot, Governor of Bresa and one of the foreign favourites of Charles V., obtained th

with him." The opportunity was eagerly welcomed by the planters, and the governor, not thinking it necessary to construe his orders from home too stringently, allowed two-thirds of the cargo to be sold. As neither Hawkins nor the Spanish colonists anticipated any serious displeasure on the part of Philip II., the remaining 100 slaves were left as a deposit with the Council of the island. Hawkins invested the proceeds in a return cargo of hides, half of which he sent in Spanish vessels to Spain under the care of his partner, while he returned with the rest to

t of S. Juan d'Ulloa or Vera Cruz. The next day the fleet of New Spain, consisting of thirteen large ships, appeared outside, and after an exchange of pledges of peace and amity with the English intruders, entered on the 20th. On the morning of the 24th, however, a fierce encounter was begun, and Hawkins and Drake, stubbornly defending themselves against tremendous odds, were glad to escape with two shattered vessels and the loss of ￡100,000 treasure. After a voyage of terrible suffering, Drake, in the "Judith," succeeded in reaching England on 20th January 1569, and Hawkins followed five days later.48 Within a few years, however, Drake was away again, this time alone and with the sole, unblushing pu

1595. Though under the joint command of Drake and Hawkins, the expedition seemed doomed to disaster throughout its course. One vessel, the "Francis," fell into the hands of the Spaniards. While the fleet was passing through the Virgin Isles, Hawkins fell ill and died. A desperate attack was made on S. Juan de Porto Rico, but the English, after losing forty or fifty men, were compelled to retire. Drake then

tter the Invincible Armada, he now pillaged treasure ships on the coasts of the Spanish Main; if he had been with Drake to flout his Catholic Majesty at Cadiz, he now closed with the Spaniards within their distant cities beyond the seas. Thus he lined his own pockets with Spanish doubloons, and incidentally curbed Philip's power of invading England. Nor must we think these mariners the same as the lawless buccaneers of a later period. The men of this generat

ad seized the opportunity offered him by the plunder of the Spanish colonies to re-coup himself; and during a period of twelve years, from 1586 to 1598, almost every year fitted out, and often himself commanded, an expedition against the Spaniards. In his last and most ambitious effort, in 1598, he equipped twenty vessels entirely at his own cost, sailed from Plymouth in March, and on 6th June laid siege to the city of San

on seigneurs with depleted fortunes. Names like Jean Terrier, Jacques Sore and Fran?ois le Clerc, the latter popularly called "Pie de Palo," or "wooden-leg," by the Spaniards, were as detestable in Spanish ears as those of the great English captains. Even before 1500 French corsairs hovered about Cape St Vincent and among the Azores and the Canaries; and their prowess and audacity were so feared that Columbus, on returning from his third voyage in 1498, declared that he had sailed for the island of Madeira by a new route to avoid meeting a French fleet which was awaiting him n

ew leagues from the city. As there were then five Spanish ships lying in the harbour, the inhabitants compelled the captains to attempt the seizure of the pirate, promising to pay for the ships if they were lost. Three vessels of 200 tons each sailed out to the attack, and for several days they fired at the French corsair, which, being a patache of light draught, had run up the bay beyond their reach. Finally one morning the Frenchmen were seen pressing with both sail and oar to escape from the port.

nce and little hope of succour, left their homes to the mercy of the freebooters and fled to the hills and woods with their families and most precious belongings. Thus when, in October 1554, another band of three hundred French privateers swooped down upon the unfortunate town of St. Jago de Cuba, they were able to hold it for thirty days, and plundered it to the value of 80,000 pieces of eight.56 The following year, however, witnessed an even more remarkable action. In July 1555 the celebrated captain, Jacques Sore, landed two hundred men from a caravel a half-league from the city of Havana, and before daybreak marched on the town and forced the surrender of the castle. The Spanish governor had time to retire to the country, where he gathered a small force of Spaniards and negroes, and returned to surprise the French by night. Fifteen or sixteen of the latter were killed, and Sore, who himself was wounded, in a rage gave orders for the massacre of all the prisoners. He burned the cathedral and the hospital, pillaged the houses and razed most of the city

ger Antilles-Cuba, Hispaniola, Porto Rico and Jamaica-and for those islands like Trinidad, which lie close to the mainland. And when in 1519 Cortez sailed from Cuba for the conquest of Mexico, and twelve years later Pizarro entered Peru, the emigrants who left Spain to seek their fortunes in the New World flocked to the vast territories which the Conquistadores and their lieutenants had subdued on the Continent. It was consequently to

es as early as 1542, by 1580 seem to have gained some foothold in Guiana;58 and the French Huguenots, under the patronage of the Admiral de Coligny, made three unsuccessful efforts to form settlements on the American continent, one in Brazil in 1555, another near Port Royal in South Carolina in 1562, and two years later a third on the St. John's River in Florida. The only English effort in the sixteenth century was the vain attempt of Sir Walter Raleigh between 1585 and 1590 to plant a colony on Roanoke Island, on the coast of what is now North Carolina. It was not till 1607 that the first permanent English settlement in America was made at Jamestown in Virginia. Between 1609 and 1619 numerous stations were established by English, Dutch and French in Guiana between the mouth of the Orinoco and that of the Amazon. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was incorporated, and a few years later proposals for a similar company were broached in Engla

leets harassed the coasts of Chile and Peru,60 while in Brazil61 and the West Indies a second "Pie de Palo," this time the Dutch admiral, Piet Heyn, was proving a scourge to the Spaniards. Heyn was employed by the Dutch West India Company, which from the year 1623 onwards, carried the Spanish war into the transmarine possessions of Spain and Portugal. With a fleet composed of twenty-six ships and 3300 men, of which he was vice-admiral, he greatly distinguished himself at the capture of Bahia, the seat of Portuguese power in Brazil. Similar expeditions were sent out annually, and brought back the rich spoils of the South American colonies. Within two years the extraordinary number of eighty ships, with 1500 cannon and over 9000 sailors and soldiers, were despatched to American seas, and although Bahia was soon retaken, the Dutch for a time occupied Pernambuco, as well as San Juan de Porto Rico in the West Indies.62 In 1628 Piet Heyn was in command of a squadron designed to intercept the

f Sir Francis Drake and his contemporaries. Starting out with three ships and about 1100 men, mostly picked up in St. Kitts and Barbadoes, he cruised along the Main from Caracas to Honduras and plundered the towns of Maracaibo and Truxillo. On 25th March 1643 he dropped anchor in what is now Kingston Harbour in Jamaica, landed about 500 me

irginia was land discovered by the English and therefore not within the jurisdiction of Philip; and a week later Salisbury, while confiding to Zuniga that he thought the English might not justly go to Virginia, still refused to prohibit their going or command their return, for it would be an acknowledgment, he said, that the King of Spain was lord of all the Indies.68 In 1609, in the truce concluded between Spain and the Netherlands, one of the stipulations provided that for nine years the Dutch were to be free to trade in all places in the East and West Indies except those in actual possession of the Spaniards on the date of cessation of hostilities; and thereafter the English and French governments endeavoured with all the more persistence to obtain a similar privilege. Attorney-General Heath, in 1625, presented a memorial to the Crown on the advantages derived by the Spaniards and Dutch in the West Indies, maintaining that it was neither safe nor profitable for them to be absolute lords of those regions; and he suggested that his Majesty openly interpose or permit it to be done underhand.69 In September 1637 proposals were renewed in England for a West India Company as the only method of obtaining a share in the wealth of America. It was suggested that some convenient port be seized as a safe retreat from which to plunder Spanish trade on land an

0 the governor of Cumana had suggested to the King, as a means of keeping Dutch and English ships from the salt mines of Araya, the ingenious scheme of poisoning the salt. This advice, it seems, was not followed, but a few years later, in 1605, a Spanish fleet of fourteen galleons sent from Lisbon surprised and burnt nineteen Dutch vessels found loading salt at Araya, and murdered most of the prisoners.73 In December 1604 the Venetian ambassador in London wrote of "news that the Spanish in the West Indies captured two English vessels, cut off the hands, feet, noses and ears of the crews and smeared them with honey and tied them to trees to be tortured by flies and other insects.

. Providence Island and its neighbour, Henrietta, being situated near the Mosquito Coast, were peculiarly exposed to Spanish attack;78 while near the north shore of Hispaniola the island of Tortuga, which was colonized by the same English company, suffered repeatedly from the assaults of its hostile neighbours. In July 1635 a Spanish fleet from the Main assailed the island of Providence, but unable to land among the rocks, was after five days beaten off "considerably torn" by the shot from the fort.79 On the strength of these injuries received and of others anticipated, the Providence Company obtained from the king the liberty "to right themselves" by making reprisals, and during the next six years kept numerous vessels preying upon Spanish commerce in those waters. King Philip was th

des II. 1, p. 4, cited in Scelle:

urn) Scelle, op.

han de hacer con ruido de armas, sino con caridad y buen m

urn) Scelle, op.

II. jusqu'aux Bourbons., II. pp. 204 and 215. Not till

e bien souvent n'en ont pas connaissance, ne jugeant pas à propos de leur en parler, afin de tenir les affaires plus secrètes et qu'il n'y ait que le commissionaire à le savoir, lequel en rend compte à son retour des Indes, directement à celui qui en a donne la cargaison en confiance sans avoir nul egard pour ceux au nom desquels l

nts in Spain to revenge himself on Henry IV. In 1624 Olivares seized 160 Dutch vessels. The goods of Genoese merchants were sequestered by Philip IV. in 1644; and in 1684 French merchandize was again seized, and Mexican traders whose storehouses contained such goods were fined 500,000 ecus, although the same storehouses contained English and Dutch goods which were left unnoticed. The fine was later restored upon Admiral d'Estrées' threat to bombard Cadiz. The solicitude of the French government

always informed of the situation and advantages of these ports, and of the facilities and difficulties to be met with in case of an attack upon them; so that the Spaniards might realise that if they failed to

urn) Weiss, op.

return) Ibid.

The Naval Tracts of Sir Wm. Mons

ilitate emigration to America, vessels were allowed to sail from certain other ports, notably San Sebastian, Bilboa, Coruna, Cartagena and Malaga. The ships might register in these ports, but were obliged always to make their return voyage to Seville. But either the cedula was revoked, or was never made use of, for, according to Scelle,

urn) Scelle, op.

Indies to appoint a resident judge at Cadiz to replace the officers of the Casa there. This institution, called the "J

op. cit., i. p. 52 and note; D

Terra Firma only began with the opening of the great silver mines of Potosi, the rich yields of which after

alde and de Rochefort to the French kin

halde and de Rochefort to the French k

op. cit., i. p. 64; Dampier:

February 1637, strict orders were received from Gautemala that the ships were not to sail that year, because th

ransit might be accomplished in two or three days, but at other times from six to twelve days were required. To transfer goods from Chagre to Porto Bello was a matter of only eight or nine hours. This route was used in winter when the roads were rendered impassable by the great rains and floods. The overland journey, though shorter, was also more difficult and expensive. The goods were carried o

t of its unhealthiness, and because the harbour, being open to the sea, afforded little shelter to shipping. Gage says that in his time Nombre de Dios was almost forsaken because of its climate. Dampier, writing thirty years later, describes the s

turn) Gage, ed.

turn) Scelle, op

return) Oppenh

alleons at Cartagena, it was given its clearance and allowed to sail

eturn) Duhalde

awl. MSS., A. 175, 313

enheim (ii. pp. 335 ff.). Instead of watering in Hispaniola, the

eturn) Duhalde

eturn) Quintal=

stre" were supposed not to exceed 300 tons, bu

alde and de Rochefort; Sc

turn) Gage, ed.

uhalde and de Rochefort

, op. cit., i. p. 45; Recop.

thout registering them with the Contratacion; and on the return of the fleets received the price of their goods in ingots of gold and silver by the same fraud. It is scarcely possible that this was don

turn) Weiss, op.

encias established at Panama, San Domingo, and Gautemala, bought their posts in Spain. The offices in the interior were in the gift of the viceroys and sold to the highest bidder. Although each port had three corregidors who audited the finances, as they also paid for their places, they connived

Froude: History of Eng

the islands five weeks. He thinks that if the Queen finds herself burdened with the King of Spain, to attempt them would be most honourable, feasible and profitable. He exhorts him not to refuse

urn) Scelle, op.

turn) Scelle, op

The Spaniards here are proud and insolent, yet needy and weak, their force is reputation, their safety is opinion. The Spaniards treat the English worse than Moors. The government is lazy and has

ise and growth of the West India Colonies." By Dalby

anish captain at the Isle of Mona); Pacheco, etc.: Coleccion de documentos ... de las posesiones espanoles en America y Oceania, tom. xl. p. 305 (cross-examinati

range regions," which sailed from the Thames on 20th May in company with the "Mary of Guildford," was lost by

t, ed. 1600, iii. p. 700; Fr

Scelle., op. cit., i

olecc. de doc. ... de u

n) Froude, op. cit.

Corbett: Drake and the

bett: Drake and the Tudor

) Corbett: The Succe

struction of carracks to pursue the privateers, and in 1513 royal cedulas were sent to the officials of the Casa de Contratacion ordering

tomos i., iv., vi.; Ducéré: Les corsaires sous l'anci

olecc. de doc. ... de u

: (return)

eturn) Marcel,

olecc. de doc. ... de u

olecc. de doc. ... de u

istorical Geography of the Briti

turn) Weiss, op.

ro, op. cit., iii. ch. x

to the Crown of Spain, and Brazil, a Portuguese colony, was con

: History of the People of

People of the Netherlands, iv. p. 37; Duro,

) Brit. Mus., Add. M

miral of the fleet by order of Parliament in March 1642, and altho

Mus., Sloane MSS., 793 or 89

urn) Winwood Pape

n: Genesis of the United S

eturn) C.S.P. C

eturn) C.S.P. C

ndon State Papers, ii. p. 8

turn) Duro, op.

rn) Duro, op. cit.

urn) C.S.P. Venet

turn) Winwood Pa

dd. MSS., 36,319, No. 7; 36,320, No

Colon., 1574-1660:-1629, 5th

zen English prisoners captured by the Spaniards at sea

. Colon., 1574-1660:-1635,

) Brit. Mus., Add. M

asion in the Low Countries, etc. Whereunto is added avisos from several places, of the taking of the Is

. The general of the galleons, named Francisco Dias Pimienta, had beene formerly in the moneth of July with above 3000 men, and the least of his ships, in the island of S. Catalina, wher

urn) Rawl. MSS.,